On Call with Dr. Mary Talley Bowden

Idaho’s Medical Freedom Act and a Federal Court Ruling Leslie Manookian, founder of the Health Freedom Defense Fund, drafted and helped pass Idaho’s Medical Freedom Act into law, a landmark measure passed after an initial gubernatorial veto, signed by Governor Brad Little on April 4, 2025. The statute bars employers, businesses, and public actors from requiring medical interventions—vaccines, tests, masks, pills, devices, or injections—as a condition of ordinary life in Idaho, while still allowing ordinary public-health steps such as sending a sick child home from school or asking someone to wash their hands. This past December, a French-owned daycare in Boise filed a federal lawsuit challenging the law, alleging eight constitutional violations, including interference with freedom of assembly and expression because the facility could not exclude unvaccinated children. The case was filed in federal rather than state court due to claims Idaho’s Medical Freedom Act violates the Constitution. Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador, who had publicly supported the bill, defended the statute. A federal judge dismissed the complaint with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled. Manookian characterized the judge as a moderate Biden appointee who found the plaintiffs’ reading of the law a “gross misinterpretation.” The ruling held that the Act does not silence speech or prevent private expression of views; it only prohibits coercion of medical procedures. Manookian framed the decision as useful precedent for other states. In January 2025 her organization and Stand for Health Freedom launched a 15-group Medical Freedom Act Coalition that includes Americans for Health Freedom. Model legislation and toolkits were circulated. Similar bills were introduced in about a dozen states during the 2026 sessions, often by senior legislators or physicians. Arizona’s version passed both chambers before Governor Katie Hobbs vetoed it. Manookian expected the measure to return in 2027, especially if a more supportive governor is elected. She cited a poll commissioned with Brownstone Institute showing 91 percent of respondents across parties favored informed consent for medical choices, including vaccination, and 87 percent wanted medical freedom written into law. Our discussion then turned to federal agencies. Manookian argued the CDC lacks statutory authority under the Public Health Service Act to issue vaccine recommendations that shape individual medical decisions or to practice “shared clinical decision making.” She compared the situation to earlier litigation against the FDA over ivermectin statements and to her own successful 2022 challenge to the federal transportation mask mandate. She contended that no childhood vaccine on the CDC schedule has undergone a proper placebo-controlled safety study and that state statutes often incorporate the federal schedule, giving recommendations the practical force of law. She also warned of hundreds of mRNA products in development and urged state legislatures, not federal agencies, to set health policy. We both stressed grassroots work: contacting legislators in the off-season, joining newsletters, attending local meetings, and supporting allied groups. Manookian presented the Idaho ruling and the multi-state campaign as evidence that medical-freedom legislation can survive court review and that public support is broader than some pollsters claim. Follow Leslie Manookian and the Health Freedom Defense Fund on X. Get full access to Dangerous Misinformation at drbowden.substack.com/subscribe

Neuroscientist Dr. Kevin McCairn joins us for our 4th update on a promising treatment for those disabled from the COVID shots. He and Dr. Cato have now treated more than 65 patients with severe injuries, and tonight, one of my patients, 22-year-old Jack and his mother Karrie, share their experience and Jack’s response to the 4-week protocol he went through in Japan. The core protocol combines immune-adsorption apheresis (DFPP), performed through a central line, with daily IV high-dose stem-cell growth factors. The team aims for four weekly cycles of five treatment days. A central line, rather than a peripheral IV, is used because filtering blood closer to the brain more efficiently removes autoantibodies and protein aggregates that impair circulation and oxygen delivery. Growth factors appear synergistic, helping the body recover after the filtration step. Results have been better than he anticipated, given the severity and duration of these patients’ symptoms. Roughly ten to twelve patients showed little improvement, often in the presence of other illnesses. Another group improved only modestly; many of them were later found to have previously undetected cerebrospinal-fluid leaks. A sizable remainder, including Jack, experienced marked relief. McCairn described the overall pattern as encouraging yet still early, noting that some patients may need repeat sessions months or years later. Jack’s account illustrated both the severity of symptoms and the speed of change after treatment. Once an active teenager, he developed unexplained depression, crushing fatigue, abdominal pain, extreme weight swings, swollen purple extremities, and blood-work anomalies that conventional labs could not reconcile. Cardiac imaging was abnormal. Multiple physicians prescribed antidepressants, suggested drug use or infection, or diagnosed conditions later ruled out. After years of emergency-room visits and specialist referrals, the family traveled to Japan in July for a 28-day course. The first two weeks were physically and emotionally taxing, especially the placement of neck catheters. By the third cycle Jack walked thousands of steps and reported returning energy and clearer thinking. Back home he has lost more than thirty pounds of inflammatory swelling, resumed light exercise, and maintains a largely carnivore diet; even one processed meal produced two days of relapse. His mother Karrie emphasized that diet and completion of the full protocol mattered. She also stressed the value of an accompanying advocate, given language barriers and the intensity of daily procedures. McCairn and the family contrasted Japan’s established use of these techniques for neurological conditions with the regulatory, legal, and insurance obstacles that keep similar care scarce in the United States. Screening now includes myelography because CSF leaks appear far more often in this cohort than in the general population and seem to blunt treatment response. Dr. McCairn has been inundated with requests for help but is limited by equipment that cannot process samples quickly and is in need of funds for better analytic equipment to study blood samples systematically. He has instructions on how to send a sample on his website , but due to demand, results could take months. While Jack’s recovery is evidence that targeted intervention can help some of the most severely affected patients, larger studies, longer follow-up, and regulatory change would be required before such care could become routine. Get full access to Dangerous Misinformation at drbowden.substack.com/subscribe

AMERICANS FOR HEALTH FREEDOM | FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 21, 2026 Media Contact: Trevor Fitzgibbon 704-775-0487, [email protected] Americans for Health Freedom Tucker Carlson, Massie and Greene Join Doctors Warning Trump: Ban mRNA Shots or Lose the MAHA Vote Coalition of physicians, scientists and vaccine-injured families — with more than 63 million combined social-media followers — tells the White House and HHS Secretary Kennedy the health-freedom bloc will back challengers unless mRNA products are pulled from the market WASHINGTON — Tucker Carlson, Rep. Thomas Massie, former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and more than 100 physicians, scientists and parents of vaccine-injured children have delivered a formal warning to President Donald J. Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: remove mRNA COVID-19 shots and related gene-therapy products from the U.S. market or lose the Make America Healthy Again vote. The letter, organized by Americans for Health Freedom and a network of community physicians, says continued inaction on what signatories call the centerpiece of the health-freedom agenda will drive that bloc toward electoral challengers in the midterms and in 2028. The organizers put the coalition’s combined social-media reach at more than 63 million followers. “The removal of mRNA shots has been the central goal of the MAHA and health-freedom agenda, yet you have not taken decisive action despite credible evidence of harm,” the signatories wrote. “If you continue to ignore the centerpiece of our policy agenda — removing all mRNA products covered by PREP Act emergency declarations entirely from the market — you will pay a political price.” What the Letter Says Is Incomplete The coalition argues that current HHS, CDC and FDA policy undercuts the health-freedom platform the administration campaigned on. The letter cites, among other objections: • Continued administration of COVID mRNA shots to more than 50 million Americans this year, including an estimated 7 million children, which the authors say proceeds without studies showing prevention of hospitalization or death and amid data they say document severe harms, including pediatric deaths acknowledged by the FDA; • The appointment of Erica Schwartz to lead the CDC after she told the Senate that mRNA technology is safe and effective; • Approval of a new mRNA influenza shot that, the letter says, was not tested against a true placebo, lacks long-term safety data and did not measure hospitalization or death; • A $1.24 billion HHS contract award to Pfizer for future mRNA products, including products for children; • No meaningful federal assistance for people the coalition says were injured by mRNA shots; • The CDC’s failure to publish current cancer statistics amid claims of rising incidence the signatories link to the shots; and • Failure to enforce manufacturers’ contractual duty to report adverse events to VAERS. The letter also criticizes an Aug. 10, 2026, executive order that reduced the childhood schedule from 17 to 11 vaccine types while elevating pneumococcal and HPV shots into a “universal core recommendation” and adopting “shared decision-making” language the authors call constitutionally corrosive. Signatories cite Merck’s reported $50 million Gardasil settlement with plaintiffs who alleged autoimmunity. Evidence Cited and Six Demands The authors write that more than 4,550 peer-reviewed publications, Pfizer documents obtained in litigation by attorney Aaron Siri, VAERS and V-safe data, and foreign-government datasets already document “catastrophic levels of deaths and serious injuries,” including reproductive harm they describe as an approximately 400 percent increase in miscarriage rates. They say pregnancy remains listed as a high-risk category in revised FDA policy even after CDC recommendation language changed, and that the American Academy of Pediatrics continues to recommend mRNA shots for infants. A Children’s Health Defense citizen petition seeking to relabel Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 products as EUA countermeasures rather than fully approved vaccines has been pending at HHS since Dec. 8, 2025, and has drawn more than 104,000 public comments, the letter says. The PREP Act emergency declaration remains in force through Dec. 31, 2029. The coalition asks the president and the secretary to take six near-term steps: 1. Ban mRNA and gene therapy–derived technologies for all vaccines, citing what signatories call demonstrated failure on safety, efficacy and disease prevention after more than four years and billions of doses; 2. Terminate the PREP Act declaration for COVID injections on the grounds that no emergency exists; 3. Recommend that Congress repeal the PREP Act entirely because of constitutional conflicts; 4. Ban pharmaceutical direct-to-consumer advertising, as every country except the United States and New Zealand already does; 5. Review and revise HHS policies the letter says create perverse incentives for medical coercion, including vaccination; and 6. End conflicts of interest at the CDC, FDA, NIH and NIAID. Political Warning Signatories say they will recruit candidates at the state level and support challengers and sponsors of related federal legislation. They describe the MAHA and health-freedom vote as a historic swing bloc without which neither major party could have prevailed. Lead signatory Mary Talley Bowden, M.D., of Americans for Health Freedom, the Independent Medical Alliance and the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation, is joined by Independent Medical Alliance President and CMO Joseph Varon, M.D.; McCullough Foundation President Peter A. McCullough, M.D.; cardiologist Aseem Malhotra, M.D.; Robert W. Malone, M.D., M.S.; Jill Glasspool Malone, Ph.D.; Ryan Cole, M.D.; Sean Troxclair, M.D., Louisiana’s deputy surgeon general; Vaccine Safety Research Foundation founder Steven Kirsch; evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein, Ph.D.; investigator Sasha Latypova; comedian Jimmy Dore; Tucker Carlson; former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene; Minnesota State Rep. Shane Mekeland; parents of vaccine-injured children including Allen and Taylor Martin and Dan Hartman; React19 Co-Chair Joel Wallskog, M.D.; and more than 100 additional physicians, nurses and advocates listed on the published letter. The letter was inspired by medical-freedom leaders including former pharmaceutical executive Sasha Latypova and Jack Jasper and Andy Schmitt of Paradox Press. The full letter and growing list of signatories are posted at americansforhealthfreedom.org/letter-to-kennedy. ### About Americans for Health Freedom Americans for Health Freedom is a national advocacy organization working with physicians, scientists and grassroots medical-freedom groups to restore informed consent, end liability shields for emergency medical products, and remove what it regards as unsafe genetic-vaccine platforms from the U.S. market. Media note: Interview requests for Dr. Mary Talley Bowden and other signatories may be directed through Americans for Health Freedom. The letter is available for reprint with attribution. Get full access to Dangerous Misinformation at drbowden.substack.com/subscribe

Board-certified psychiatrist Dr. Joseph Witt-Doerring discusses his specialized focus on adverse reactions to psychiatric medications and safe de-prescribing, using the high-profile Lindsay Clancy case as a timely illustration. Witt-Doerring, who has worked in clinical practice, for Johnson & Johnson, and at the FDA, argues that conventional psychiatry often oversimplifies mental distress as chemical imbalances requiring indefinite drug treatment. His approach emphasizes common-sense interventions—gradual medication reduction, accountability for diet, physical activity, and lifestyle—helping many patients regain energy and motivation that long-term drugs can suppress. Witt-Doerring reports that for roughly 80 percent of cases involving anxiety, depression, or insomnia, patients can discontinue medications without major issues. More complex conditions such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia present greater challenges, and some individuals elect to remain on treatment. He notes a growing network of clinicians, including Mark Horowitz in the UK and participants in deprescribing mentorship programs, who share this holistic orientation. The conversation centered on Lindsay Clancy, a Massachusetts mother charged with killing her three young children in early 2023. Initially, many viewed the act as pure evil warranting imprisonment. Witt-Doerring contends the medical record supports a finding of not guilty by reason of insanity due to medication-induced psychosis. After her third child, Clancy experienced postpartum depression and life stresses. Telemedicine providers prescribed Zoloft, an SSRI; she developed severe insomnia, the dose was doubled, symptoms worsened, and it was stopped. She was later placed on Prozac, then Seroquel, and eventually amitriptyline, with the dose increased the day before the tragedy. In a short period she was exposed to approximately 11 medications. Drug labels explicitly warn that antidepressants can precipitate mania and psychosis. Clancy later reported command auditory hallucinations. Collateral evidence includes text messages in which she described the drugs damaging her brain and making her feel worse, disclosure of intrusive homicidal thoughts to family weeks earlier, and forensic analysis of her computer searches for medication side effects. Family, friends, colleagues, and her nanny described her as a loving mother with no history of violence, substance abuse, or relational breakdown—the typical motives in filicide cases. The prosecution’s theories of psychopathy or “altruistic filicide” appear inconsistent with this background. Witt-Doerring highlights parallel malpractice concerns over continued antidepressant prescribing despite clear worsening. He cites legal precedents. In the Donald Schell case, a man with a prior adverse reaction to Prozac was prescribed Paxil and, within days, killed his wife, daughter, and granddaughter before taking his own life; a jury found the manufacturer liable for failure to warn. In Canada, David Carmichael killed his son while experiencing Paxil-induced delusions and was not prosecuted for murder after authorities accepted the drug-induced psychosis explanation. Witt-Doerring underscores broader risks: roughly 17 percent of Americans take SSRIs and about 5 percent are on multiple psychiatric medications. Adverse behavioral effects are more pronounced in younger patients, whose nervous systems continue maturing into the late twenties. High-risk windows include initiation, dose increases, and abrupt discontinuation. SSRI withdrawal, long minimized as mild and self-limiting, proves severe for a substantial minority—surveys indicate that around one-third cannot discontinue because of intolerable symptoms. He advocates stronger informed consent, clinician education on deprescribing, and greater attention to physical health. Obesity, ultra-processed diets, and sedentary lifestyles contribute heavily to anxiety, depression, and insomnia; treating the body improves the mind. The Clancy case, while tragic, illustrates how rapid polypharmacy and ignored warning signs can produce catastrophic outcomes and why safer, more individualized psychiatric practice is urgently needed. Follow Dr. Josef on X and visit his clinic website here. Get full access to Dangerous Misinformation at drbowden.substack.com/subscribe

Attorney Brian Festa of We The Patriots USA, a pro bono firm focused on medical and religious freedom cases, outlines ongoing legal battles over states’ elimination of religious exemptions to school vaccination requirements. These efforts highlight tensions between public health mandates and First Amendment protections for religious liberty, particularly in private and religious educational settings. Festa describes the case of three Amish community schools in New York, which faced fines exceeding $150,000 for continuing to accept religious exemptions after the state repealed them in 2019. New York, like California, Connecticut, and Maine, abolished such exemptions for all schools—public, private, and parochial. West Virginia effectively bars them as well. The Amish schools, operating as private religious institutions, allowed families to opt out based on sincerely held beliefs opposing vaccination. After losing at the district court and initially at the Second Circuit, the case was remanded by the Supreme Court in light of Mahmoud v. Taylor (2025), which affirmed parents’ rights to opt children out of certain school curricula on religious grounds, and related rulings extending similar principles to public health contexts. Despite this, the Second Circuit again dismissed the challenge, distinguishing vaccination mandates as less invasive of religious freedom than curricular content—a distinction Festa criticizes, noting that vaccination effects are irreversible while classroom teaching can be countered at home. We The Patriots is litigating a nearly identical case involving Milford Christian Church and its Little Eagles Preschool in Connecticut. After Connecticut eliminated religious exemptions in 2021, the preschool continued honoring them. State inspectors threatened closure unless unvaccinated children were either vaccinated or expelled. A federal lawsuit filed in 2023 reached oral argument at the Second Circuit in April; a decision is expected imminently and is likely to follow the Amish precedent. Festa anticipates an adverse ruling, after which the firm plans to petition the Supreme Court. A parallel suit was filed in July against a public school district in Turner, Maine, on behalf of an eighth-grader whose parents seek a religious exemption. These cases position the organization to challenge exemptions losses across multiple federal circuits. Festa explains the strategic focus on religious free exercise rather than a broader bodily autonomy claim. Citing Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which rejected an unenumerated constitutional right to bodily autonomy in the abortion context, he noted that courts have not recognized a general right against compelled medical interventions outside narrow settings. Religious objections often center on the historical use of aborted fetal cell lines in vaccine development and testing, as well as other ingredients or manufacturing processes that conflict with faith-based principles. A Supreme Court victory could establish nationwide precedent protecting parental rights to religious opt-outs, whether limited to religious schools or applied more broadly to all educational settings. Such a ruling would endure far longer than temporary political or executive measures. Collectively, these cases represent a multi-year campaign to restore religious exemptions and affirm parental authority. Supreme Court review offers the most durable path to protecting these liberties for current and future generations, given the lasting nature of constitutional precedent. We the Patriots is a pro-bono, non-profit legal firm focusing on medical and religious freedom cases. Register for their upcoming Vaccine Safety Awareness Marathon: Get full access to Dangerous Misinformation at drbowden.substack.com/subscribe